A Fascinating Reimagining of History

I want to talk about this follow-up article by Steve Paikin about how people responded to his initial post. Paikin loves to play both sides, and in this case puts the artist responsible, Gordon Shadrach, on the defensive. It also doesn't bring in a voice from the museum, so, yet again, as is often the case, the media presents a lone Black voice defending their creativity and work from incensed white people. I bet few, if any, of the voices of detractors belong to someone who has actually been to see the exhibit. And Paikin, in trying to defend the reimagining (at least I think he's trying to defend), does a disservice to the museum, Shadrach, and courageous attempts to retell and contest dominant histories.

Dis/Mantel is an art intervention, in a way, in an otherwise typical historic house. It bends and plays with history and truth, but truth is subjective. Spadina House is itself a subjective telling of 19th century Toronto. What folks don't realise is that in most cases, historic houses are already bolstered by "fictions" of the families that lived there, of the normalization of what is almost always upper-middle or upper class values, even the objects within them. Most historic homes are furnished, at least in part, with stand-ins that are period appropriate, but didn't belong to the owners. The Austins didn't live in an 19th century time capsule. A decision was made to portray a period and the house has been staged to look as it did in a particular time. This reimagining is just bringing that to the fore in a jarring way. Jarring for typical museum audiences, anyway. Most typical museum-goers are educated and white, and we (I am obviously one of them) are used to seeing history presented from our perspective. 

A more traditional means to do a show like this would be to highlight Louisa the family's Black laundress, and her role within the house. That would have been a solid interpretation 30 or 40 years ago, but no less problematic than excluding her altogether. Why? It situates and reinforces the narrative of Black servitude to whites. What this reimagining does is unsettle societal biases built in systemic racism and white privileges. It's not trying to show you objective truth, rather, it is asking you to confront how history is constructed and interpreted. Even if the exhibit is considered a failure, which is yet to be seen, I applaud Spadina House for making it possible and giving space to Shadrach to invert the traditional narrative and allowing visitors to confront their own biases.

https://www.tvo.org/article/when-is-a-museum-not-a-museum

Giving Thanks To...

 I'm not busy enough, so I thought I'd apply for a professorship.  Having never put together a Teaching Dossier before, because, let's be honest, I never really planned to become a university instructor, I have to figure out what my philosophy and strategy for teaching are, and I need to reflect on and summarise the teaching I've done.  Thankfully, this application isn't due until later in January, because I can already tell it's going to be a lot of work for which I won't have time until all five-bazillion assignments have been graded.  Anyway, one of the problems I've realised is that iSchool TAs don't get evaluations.  We might be evaluated within course evals, but we don't see those.  So, unless a professor puts something down on paper, it's hard to show what you've done and whether your work is good or appreciated.  

Back in the autumn of 2020, when we were all reeling in the first year of the pandemic, I TA'd for Jenna Hartel, a professor for whom I'd never worked before.  I was given two principle roles, to develop a lecture on Indigenous Ways of Knowing, and to help design and co-ordinate the novel assignment "Giving Thanks To..." which was a deep learning, reflective assignment in which students choose new or marginalised information scholars, researched their work, and then wrote them an old fashioned thank you card.  Teaching the Indigenous Ways of Knowing lecture was interesting for me, but challenging for my person ethics as I am not Indigenous.  Some of my curatorial work explored Indigenous-Settler interactions (Beads: patterns in time, 2007, and Unsettling the Thames, 2011) and I've always been interested in issues of repatriation and cultural appropriation, but to lead a class on an Indigenous topic, as a settler, was uncomfortable.  In order to do it justice and to make sure I used the opportunity to raise Indigenous voices, I consulted with a number of friends who are Indigenous educators for advice (and their blessing), and chose readings from the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.  In delivering the lecture, I spoke candidly about my discomfort leading the class, and made sure to clearly centre all the Indigenous scholars and Knowledge Keepers I quoted.  I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it, but I hope future lectures were delivered by Indigenous teachers.

The so-called "gratitude project" was an entirely different experience.  This work took a majority of my TA hours and I worked with Jenna to develop how the assignment would be structured and assessed.  I helped with the writing of the brief, and in the end, I graded all the submissions.  What I initially considered something of a "fluff" assignment for a class of Masters students, I came to see as a deeply meaningful, reflective, and pedagogically inspired project, not only for the students, but for me as well.  Jenna seated the assignment within a deep-learning or "Sentipensante" pedagogy as a way for students to not only discover the works of new or marginalised information scholars, but to help students find emotional balance and gratitude in a world in chaos.  Jenna presented this assignment as an alternative learning approach at a conference, paper, and video, and in all cases she made very sure to include the work that I put into the project.  It remains the only work I've done as a TA that has earned public gratitude from the professor and for that I, too, am grateful.  You can watch the video below, or read her paper here.

Working as Jenna Hartel's TA was an inspiring experience.  I'm not quite sure how I landed the class, as I almost always spend my fall semesters grading two other courses, but this worked out very well.  It was the first time I was heavily involved in course assessment design, but more importantly, it was an opportunity to see a very different pedagogical approach in action.  Jenna was heart-felt and gentle in her course leadership and made an effort to profoundly connect with her students (and me!) although everything was done online.  My personality is very different from hers and I don't think I could emulate her teaching style, but I can, and do, take her approach to deep meaning-making, empathy, and compassion to heart when I work with students.  And, if I'm ever given the opportunity to teach a course (or courses), I will also take inspiration from her creative approach to teaching and student assessment.  I am profoundly thankful for having had the chance to TA that class.

Talking About Radar Connections

 Back in June 2019, I was a keynote speaker for the Ontario Genealogical Society (OGS) annual conference, which was being held that year in London, ON.  I don't consider myself a genealogist, not the least because I have never spent more than 20 minutes at a stretch digging into my family history, but the work I do in museums is "genealogically adjacent."  All community museums hold material that may be useful for people trying to track down family history, stories, neighbourhood, regional, or community connections.  Especially at the Secrets of Radar Museum, the work I have done closely aligns with genealogy, where researchers are family members trying to understand what it was their parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles did during the Second World War.  I help people track down service records, I cross reference names in books and memoirs, I search for their family members' within the archival and artefact collections.  For the keynote address, I used the story of one radar veteran--a museum founder and volunteer--to illustrate how his experience intersected with information about another veteran, whose family had come with questions. 

That talk had some surprising spin-offs, namely that suddenly I became something of a sought-after speaker for genealogy groups.  I was invited to present at The Genealogy Show, a massive event in the UK, which, due to the pandemic eventually was moved online, but I was also to a handful of smaller genealogy groups here in Ontario.  The radar story isn't local, but national, and I can find links to through its personnel to most of Canada, but there are some regions that were something of a hotbed for producing radar technicians, and Southern and Southwestern Ontario are two.  I was approached by the Huron Branch of the OGS (Ontario Ancestors) to give a talk centring that county's radar people, and also by the Bruce County Genealogy Society, a smaller group not officially affiliated with OGS.  

The cool thing about my PhD research--okay, there are lots of cool things, but one especially important to this particular story--is that I've been able to delve into the Secrets of Radar Museum archives in a way I never had time for when I was the curator.  The greatest historians of the radar program were the veterans themselves, as no one else in Canada could be arsed.  Partly because the program was under a veil of secrecy that lasted fifty years, and partly because Canadian war histories are few and far between, and those historians that do write them seem bafflingly obsessed with Dieppe and other perceived failures, rather than the depth and breadth of the services, or, even worse, are happy to regurgitate the British and American centric narratives that downplay Canada's roles, even when those roles are central, like radar!  Anyway, sorry to digress, but what that means is that there is no "authoritative" history of the radar program that hasn't been written by the veterans themselves. The veterans have done an excellent job chronicling their work and experiences, and have produced a number of authoritative volumes, and one of the great things they've done is track down as many radar veterans as possible, listing their service as well as post-war activities and communities.  The archives also hold mailing lists for thousands of veterans and their spouses, which is a treasure trove for genealogical information, and can then be cross-referenced to cemeteries, obituaries, community histories, etc., which is exactly what I do to furnish my talks for regional genealogy organisations.

All this was really a preamble to link to the proceedings of the Bruce County GS September 2021 meeting, which includes my approximately hour-long talk to the group.  I really enjoy speaking to local groups about how small museums can be boons for genealogical and historical research.  

When Life Gives You a Car Fire, Make it Art

The first thing you need to understand is that my next-door neighbours engage in nefarious and not-precisely-legal activities.  As a result, our shared driveway is often the site for disruptive shenanigans at all hours of the day and night, but especially at night.  Peak shenanigans were reached in February, when someone abandoned a stolen PT Cruiser convertible and lit it on fire in the driveway.  It was, at the time, incredibly scary.  And then, when the Police appeared to leave the burnt-out car there, blocking access, it became funny.  I began referring to it as an art installation.  And, as is my duty as a curator, originally of art, I created a didactic label for it.  What else could I do?

Partially Torched, 2022 Anonymous

Mixed media, PT Cruiser 

Partially Torched is a metaphor for two years of urban crisis during a pandemic. Emblematic of municipal window dressing, the car depicts atavistic style over function, the charred hood masking the health crisis beneath.  The blackened, smashed windshield calls out racially motivated violence, poorly contained, yet defined by police action represented by the forgotten police tape.  Juxtaposed against the residential homes of Old East Village, this installation invites both critical appraisal of London's visible systemic imbalances and a gesture toward the wry irony that nothing ever changes.

After two days, the car was finally taken away, so all exhibition plans were cancelled.

 

The original post was on Twitter, then shared to Instagram.  You can view the Insta post at this link. 

Here's the original Tweet thread about the car:

There's a car on fire in my driveway. So how's your night going?

— Maya H. (@mambolica) February 24, 2022

I'm grading PLE (Personal Learning Environment) maps and analyses, which help a person to map out their professional/academic/leisure learning environments, in order to understand their knowledge/experience strengths and weaknesses.  One assignment triggered a very specific memory in response, about which I probably hadn't thought in many years. 

I remember in my undergrad, 25 years ago (!), when I still thought I would be an anthropologist, I was tasked with creating a kinship chart--sort of like a family tree, but with symbols that represent people, altered to reflect deceased or ostracized members.  My chart was large, but almost every person who should have been intimately close in a traditional extended family, was shaded, meaning they were dead or estranged.  Of course, knowing most of my family was deceased, on both sides, was not news, but seeing it laid bare before me was deeply uncomfortable.  I stared at it a long time, uncertain of how I felt.  A friend walked into my room and asked what I was doing.  After the explanation, she too stared at it for a while, before bursting into laughter.  She kept apologising for laughing at something that was so sad, but it was funny, in a tragic way.  I, too, began to laugh, until we were both crying.  We hugged and I thanked her. 

At the time, I couldn't tell you (or her) why I was thanking her, but today I can pinpoint that moment as one that was foundational to my desire to help create connections between people and my interest in community bonds and identity.

 

Legend of typical kinship relations, scraped from Google.

The Road to Candidacy

Some people have suggested I should use this blog to market my extensive knowledge and experience in museums.  Consider the immediately preceding sentence as me doing just that.  I've never been good at marketing myself, and I lack to dedication to this format I had, way back in 2001, when I first wrote a blog.  I also suffer tremendous imposter syndrome and rarely think the work I produce (except in putting together exhibitions, which I don't do much of these days) is scholarly enough to share.  What I am comfortable doing; however, is talking about emotional things, the feelings we humans get to work through when life bites us, and how we persevere.*

On March 15, 2021, which happens to be my mother's birthday, I achieved PhD Candidacy.  It's something that happens in most doctoral students' lives, if they make it past the halfway mark in their programme, but back in January, there were indications I wouldn't.  You see, in spite of many drafts and revisions and meetings with all or part of my Committee, my original Thesis Proposal in December was rejected.  I failed.  I did not expect to fail.  I'd expected provisional acceptance pending revisions, but failure was not on my radar.  According to my Committee, it was a deliberation between provisional pass pending revisions or failure, and for various reasons that were probably sound, in the end they opted to reject my Proposal.

The Thesis Proposal, if you're unaware, is the document you provide that outlines the rationale for, theoretical underpinnings of, and methodology to carry out one's Thesis.  It is not developed in a black box, it is guided to varying degrees by one's Supervisor and Committee members.  The Thesis Proposal Defence, at least for my Faculty, is a meeting between the student, their full Committee, and an impartial Chair.  The student explains their Thesis Proposal in a short presentation no more than 20 minutes, and then for another 80 minutes or so, the Committee asks the student questions.  Those questions can be anything from critique and requests for elaboration to blue-sky questions to test how far the Thesis can go.  In the process, the Committee discovers weaknesses in the Thesis Proposal that need to be addressed before it can go ahead.  Then they deliberate in-camera for a while and come back with a decision.  There are four (maybe five) possible outcomes:

• Accept, as-is, no revisions;
• Accept, with edits, and two weeks to make those edits;
• Accept, with revisions, and one month to make those revisions, which may require revisiting the literature, or whatever;
• Reject, with three months to redo and defend again;
• and, if there's a fifth, in situations of egregious underperformance, I suppose it's removal from the programme. 

As I waited, and waited, and waited for my Committee's decision, I began to suspect that they were deliberating between Accept with revisions, or Reject.  When we all reconvened almost 25 minutes after they went in-camera, the Chair announced their decision.  The reason they gave for Rejecting was more about timing than how terrible my Thesis Proposal was (although it was flawed, remember, it had been through drafts and discussion with all members of my Committee over a period of months, and so it wasn't terrible), and they all agreed my presentation was very good.  The reason was the time of year.  It was, on that day, December 18.  I was, as were they, in the thick of end of term grading, as well as the pressures of seasonal activities (even in a pandemic).  Grading fills the Christmas break.  How was I supposed to revise my Proposal while spending hours and hours grading.   

Disappointment, self-doubt, and even despondency are common symptoms of PhD studies.  (The summer of 2019 I considered dropping out as the pressures of my Qualifying Exams mounted and I felt I wasn't getting the support I needed. I didn't, and in the end, I passed my Quals.)  But, initially, upon hearing my Committee's decision, I was merely bummed.  I shrugged it off and planned a debrief with my Supervisor for the coming Monday.  In that debrief, I was given the task of returning to the literature and to rethink my angle of attack.  And then I spent the next two weeks grading for two classes, and although I read a handful of articles and chapters, I basically didn't think about my Thesis Proposal much at all. 

Suddenly, it was January 3rd.  A new semester was starting.  I'd picked up a pretty big TA contract, because I thought I'd have the time as I'd, at the time, believed my Proposal would be behind me.  So now I had a contract and had to redo my Thesis Proposal.  I was fairly sure I could do it.  I usually rise to the challenge when I'm under pressure and I do my best work when I'm busy.  My Supervisor and I began working out a plan as I realised I didn't actually want to focus my thesis on what I'd initially flagged, and my readings shifted and I began rewriting.  I felt uncertain and scared, and my imposter syndrome was at an all-time high.  You see, if you fail your Thesis Proposal a second time, the typical outcome is that you get ushered out the door.  Add to this fresh pandemic restrictions, seasonal depression, and you have a recipe for emotional distress.  I also felt a different pressure, one of keeping a promise to the veterans I work(ed) with at the museum, around whom my Thesis revolves; the promise to keep and share their stories, to write their histories.  The idea I would fail them also weighed on me.  And then came the emails from the Programme Director and the letter from the Graduate Committee on Standing. 

There is nothing so confidence shattering as having the Powers That Be tell you they have doubts.  Doubts in my ability to see things through.  Doubts that I have the emotional/mental resiliency to carry on.  Doubts I can shoulder my other responsibilities at the same time.  The Programme Director is a really good guy, but he has a sort of script he has to work from in cases of students who don't produce the work expected of them.  One of the line items "offered" to those students is a Leave of Absence.  In theory, Leaves of Absence are amazing.  They give the student time to think things through, take a mental or emotional break, figure things out, or look after other life issues that need attending to.  In practice, the way they are handled is kind of barbaric.  A Leave of Absence provides a student a break, but also cuts them off from their TA work (source of income), school resources like the Health and Wellness programmes, and, their Benefits.  Those benefits are the things that make if possible for students in distress to get help at low or no cost.  As a student who has made use of those benefits, who uses the Health and Wellness resources, and who does not have a parent, spouse, or external funding shoring up her bank account so therefore needs TA contracts, being put on Leave would probably have devastating effects.  Moreover, I knew my project was good and if they could just let me get on with it, I was sure I could pull it off.  Through tears, I pleaded not to be put on Leave, and explained how my Supervisor and I had come up with a plan to get my Thesis Proposal done, in two months.  Please, I said, "if you put me on Leave, my mental health will be at greater risk and you will cut me off from financial resources I desperately need.  I will have no choice but to drop out and take whatever work I can find."

I meant it. I cry about all kinds of things, like movies and sentimental adverts, and displays of random kindness, but crying in front of the Director, and begging to be allowed to do what I knew I could accomplish, was humiliating.  My Supervisor had faith in me, so why couldn't he?  I was given a week to demonstrate how I would be get it all done, and with the strong encouragement to drop or reduce my TA contract.  Over a series of emails and another meeting, I was able to demonstrate a plan of action, and with the support of the professor for whom I was TAing, I was able to shift my hours to the second half of the term.  I was given the go-ahead by the Director.  Extension granted.  The letter from the Graduate Committee on Standing was another kick in the teeth my fragile emotional well-being did not need.  One sentence telling my my extension was granted.  A much shorter sentence to wish me good luck, and a paragraph outlining how serious it all is.

We wish you good luck moving forward.

The grounds for approving extensions are based on our assessment of the progress you have made toward the successful completion of your thesis proposal and your supervisor’s confidence in your ability to defend your proposal by the end of the Winter 2021 term. If you do not defend your proposal by the end of this extension, the Committee will be very reluctant to approve further extensions and if we do not recommend an extension, we will recommend to SGS that your registration be terminated.

 

Looking back, it's not as bad a letter as I remember it.  Presumably, this is because I was, as stated, immensely fragile, exhausted, and struggling to keep it all together, whereas now I am a full Candidate and all this is behind me.  At the time, the letter almost undid the glimmer of hope I'd found after escaping a Leave of Absence.  Almost, but not quite.  Because if there's one thing I don't back down from, it's a threat (which is a blessing and often a curse). I also had tremendous support from my friends and my Mom, who were there to listen and to offer words of encouragement when needed.  Hearing my mother say, "No matter what happens, I am proud of you and the work you've done," was much better than pep-talks about not giving up.  Working for a professor empathetic to the struggles of PhD studies, being willing to accommodate my priorities, and lending both an ear and sharing his own difficult journey to doctorate, was a gift.  Having continued access to antidepressants, and a doctor who understood why a temporary increase in dosage was the right move, was also tremendously important.  And not losing the benefits to pay for them was a bonus.

What followed was a month of the most dedicated, focused research and writing I have ever carried out in my entire life.  And, what came out of that was a much, much better Thesis Proposal and the eventual decision to Accept it, as-is, no revisions, about which I am really rather proud.  The Chair of my second Defence was the Programme Director, which was also quite satisfying, as was the follow-up letter from the Graduate Committee on Standing, congratulating me. 

There's no moral to this story.  I needed a break, but couldn't take one.  I just wanted it to be over.  And now it is, but not because I got put on Leave or I dropped out.  I'm sure things will get crazy again, but for the moment, I'm in a lull and it's awesome.  And I'm a fucking Doctoral Candidate. 

 

* Persevere is a pretty weird word, don't you think?  Of severity.  That's kind of how it translates. How do we get the "pushing through" part from "of severity"?  It probably comes from Latin.  If you care, you can Google it. 

Tante Ina's Jewish Children

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I'm half-Jewish, and strangely, my Holocaust connection comes from my Dutch Goyim family, not my New York Jewish family. I mean, probably my Nana and Zaide lost relatives, but I don't know who. I've never tried to find out.

I'd like to share the story my mom posted yesterday, in her words, and I'm including a photograph that I dug out of a box of random photos my great-aunts ("the Tantes" as they were known) had sent mom three decades ago. 

Today I have a short but intense story, regarding my aunt in the Netherlands. She was a teacher in Amsterdam who had been assigned to a Jewish school in the Ghetto round 1942*. She worked with the Rabbi to ensure her curriculum was sensitive to Jewish culture (unusual at that time). She loved the children she described as alert and very bright. After many months, she arrived at school at the usual time in the morning, to an empty school yard and a locked school. It was eerily silent. She located the caretaker who informed my aunt that the children were gone. The Nazis rounded them up overnight and put them onto a train. My aunt stood stalk still processing this information. Then, her tears began to flow and continued to flow for the rest of her life. Then and there she decided to join the Dutch Resistance. In her eighties, near the end of life and suffering from dementia, she still remembered those absent children. Her tears would roll silently down her cheeks and she’d keep saying: “I should have done more”. Her name was Ina Hogenkamp and she went on to do much more.

These are her Jewish children, when they were still alive with bright futures ahead of them. 

*It was 1941.